Day 6: 15th July 2010

I made it. After all the travelling from one place to the next, I finally made the south of France. Marseille is a lovely town by the waterfront, which still has an air of grace about it. It was hot, more than that it is bright. I sat by the marina, in a small cafe, drinking a cola and relaxing, the trials and tribulations of the past week behind me. All that remained was to follow the waterfront to Narbonne and from there up to Dave’s.
Aly text to tell me that she had been successful in interview and that the start date had been set for September, in all it was a good day. All that remained was to find a bed for the night and think about the miles ahead.
I made the decision that Monaco was just not going to happen, to do so would mean turning the bike around and heading back east toward Italy, and as I had already experienced the problems of Germany, I decided the best course of action was to avoid that happening again. The roads were hot, the day was late and with over 200 miles to cover (each way); it was not worth the potential harm to the bike. Besides, I had achieved over half of the countries I had set out to see and had perhaps a couple of thousand miles to go.
I took the time to look for a campsite, any campsite which would take me in the right direction and provide a good resting place. Now I’m not fussy. If the showers are hot, and the people welcoming, I can take pretty much anything else that life throws at me along the way. And in Martigues I thought I’d found the perfect place. It is charming, the people friendly and the water warm (not hot, but warm). I lay back in the sun with a bottle of water and looked at the 100 or so photo’s that I have taken thus far. I have got some good memories, from the trip, but something has been missing, the cultural history has been a little less than I had hoped for. The first real signs of that came as I sat outside the cafe in Marseille, I really did feel as though I had travelled. The old stone walls still remain at the entrance to the port and there is an atmosphere of history, just sitting there watching the world go by. I smiled.

You kind of make what you can in terms of eating on the road and after buying the same old, same old in the service station, I really wanted something different. So I left the safety and comfort of my tent and went in search of food. Now, my French is anything but good, but I can buy food, occasionally, keep it simple. What I hadn’t prepared myself for, was the difference in pronunciation between one region and the next, where I had happily ordered a sausage in a roll, a coffee and/or chicken in Lyon, here in Martigues the whole world changed.
‘Excuse ‘em qua. Oú puis-je acheter du pain?’ (I had soup with me, and that seemed quite a logical question. Obviously not.) The guy just stood and looked at me, as if I was speaking the foreign language... Hmm.
‘Du pain (pronounced, do pan)?’ ‘Yes’, I thought, bread...
He just looked. So I did the only thing I could think of and made the sign for eating... He got it. ‘Oh, Du-pain’.
‘Bizarre’, I thought, I’m sure that’s what I asked for, but followed him through the campsite.
We’d walked only a few hundred meters, when I saw the shop, ‘Merci.’ I said, and then I spied a like caravan next to it. ‘Ques ca-sa van (my spelling is rather limited, but you get the idea.)?’
‘la cuisine chinoise.’ In my limited understanding, I got the gist. Chinese. Oh yeah...
The tent looked a much more inviting place as I sat and ate the French version of Chinese food. The rice was dry, served with peas and bacon (?), and the chicken came as a battered roll. I could have waited for noodles, but the amount of time it had taken me to decipher the French code, I was starving to death. It didn’t matter, it was hot, it was food and it tasted really good...
So that was the evenings events, Marseille a beautiful sea front (note that I have begun to describe the rising tower-blocks, the endless building sites everywhere and the nightmare which is rush hour traffic. Hey it had been a good day, so why spoil it).
The campsite was peaceful, the air fresh and the tent warmed by the afternoon sun. All was good... What I neglected to mention was the amount of kids I had noticed when I first arrived. Evidently, it was a school-outing, the scouts, or some other such thing, but as the evening drew on. I happily managed to avoid them. That is until, from out of nowhere came the thundering charge of screaming kids making their way through the tents to the disco which had been set-up for them in the middle of the site. I’m no stickler for a bit of fun, but that must have ruined so many people’s night. I sat there trying to entertain myself as best I could, all the while thinking that it would end. My eyes got heavy, my neck ached and as I thought I could take no more, the midnight hour struck and I fell into a long and deserved sleep. I remember waking at about 1am to the glorious sound of silence. Peace had descended upon the earth and all was well...